#i bet teru could raise his temperature but what about the others

[serenlyss]

For the Sake of a Smile Chapter 6

Rating: G Relationships: terumob, teru&tome Chapter Summary:  "Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own creativeness and fragility." — Shauna Niequist Crossposted to AO3: Chapter 6

Chapter 5 // Chapter 7

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“I wonder how he got into the special class in the first place.”

Teru glances over his shoulder from where he’s sitting at his desk, chatting idly with Shigeo before the start of class. He’d been listening to a story about someone from his after-school club, but it isn’t hard to place the voices and, by extension, to determine what and who they’re talking about.

Shigeo’s voice trails off, ending on a note of curiosity. “Is something wrong?” he asks, leaning his arms on the edge of Teru’s desk and attempting to follow his line of sight.

“He seems awfully friendly with Kageyama. I bet he used his connections to force his way in, just like Kageyama did.”

“I bet he’s just as untalented as him, too. I wonder what he put on his application to get in?”

Teru tears his eyes away from the group of gossiping teenagers and looks back to Shigeo, mustering up a well-practiced smile. “It’s nothing,” he assures, “I just got distracted for a moment. What were you saying?” He wonders if his classmates know he can hear them just fine from across the mostly-quiet classroom, or if they’re speaking loudly on purpose just to get on his nerves. Either way, it’s working.

Shigeo frowns, his gaze flicking to the group across the room before looking back to Teru. “Sorry about them, they’re always like that,” he murmurs, even though he has no part in it and Teru has never seen Shigeo so much as approach them. “They’re always so suspicious of new students, and they’re not very forgiving, either. I’ve been in the same class as them since elementary school, and they still haven’t really accepted me. Most of the time, they just pretend I don’t exist.” He shrugs his shoulders, glancing down at his notebook.

Teru raises a brow at him. “Really? That’s an awfully long time to hold a grudge based on nothing,” he grumbles disapprovingly. “I would have thought that most high school students would have gotten past all the petty assumptions by the time they graduated middle school, but I guess some people never grow up.”

Shigeo shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not so sure about that. Sometimes it’s hard to know why people do things, but there’s always a reason, don’t you think?” he replies with a little smile, leaning his head forward to rest it in the palm of his hand. “They probably seem childish now, but everyone has room to grow. They just need a little more time to figure things out, I think.”

Teru’s tempted to deny such sentiments right away, but he finds himself unable to say anything when faced with Shigeo’s unabashed honesty. He states his case plainly and with a tone akin to fondness, and Teru finds that there’s nothing he wants to argue about. “Huh, I guess you’re right,” he concedes, but it doesn’t stop the little splinter of homesickness that worms its way into his heart, the longing to go back to somewhere he’s accepted by everyone.

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“... and that’s about it. I’m homeroom teacher walked in pretty soon after that, and I didn’t hear anything else from them for the rest of the day,” Teru says into his phone. Snowflakes swirl around his head and fall at his feet, only to be flattened beneath his thick snow boots as he walks back to his dorm room. Each word comes out of his mouth in a puff of fog, which hangs in the air for just a moment before dissipating out of sight. He reaches up with one mittened hand to adjust the scarf around his neck, tugging it tighter around his chilled neck.

“Talk about uptight! I bet they’ve never experienced a hard time in their lives. Maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to gossip if they got a taste of their own medicine.” Tome’s voice comes across the line crackly and somewhat distorted, and in the background, Teru can hear the telltale sounds of children playing in the winter’s first snow as Tome watches over them. Their screams are almost loud enough to drown out Tome’s voice entirely, but rather than feeling annoyed at their loudness, Teru feels a pang of loneliness that he isn’t around to experience the first snow with them. “Want me to come beat them up for you? I’ll get an express train,” Tome threatens.

Just like that, the loneliness is pushed to the back of his mind, and he has to stifle a snort of amusement at her overly-serious tone. “Absolutely not, I’d never give you the chance to embarrass me like that,” he teases, but it’s hard to keep the fondness out of his tone at the thought of her sticking up for him, just like when the other kids would try to tease him when he was just a child. “I’ll probably just leave it be. None of the other students seem to pay them much mind, and it’s not like they have a leg to stand on with their arguments, anyway. They just need to grow up a little more.” He tugs on the edge of his hat, drawing it down over the pink tips of his ears before the cold wind can get to them. 

On the other side of the line, Tome laughs, loud and boisterous. “That’s the spirit! Don’t let those elitist brats get to you. You’re gonna be--Hey! Get down from there, it’s icy!” Tome cuts herself off suddenly, her voice coming across more distant as she scolds what Teru assumes to be the younger kids getting a little too adventurous. “Don’t make me come over there, you monkeys! Uh, Teru? I’m really sorry, but I gotta go, the kids are trying to climb the trees. Call me again soon, okay?”

“Okay--” Teru starts, but before he can even say goodbye, the line goes dead. He pauses in his walking, looking down at his phone’s blank screen for a moment. His own reflection stares back at him, eyes filled with disappointment and a petty sense of annoyance that Tome had dared to hang up on him, and after a moment, he sighs and slips his phone into the pocket of his winter coat. He tugs his scarf up over his mouth and nose, feeling the loneliness easily streaming back now that he has no one to distract him. He glances up at the cloudy, snowy sky, gray and impenetrable. It’s the last day of classes before the winter holiday, and the snow is a reminder that Christmas is fast approaching. This winter, it feels even bleaker than before, and Teru’s experienced a lot of bleak, lonely Christmases growing up, some of them self-imposed. It’ll be the first Christmas in many years that he’s spent away from home; he’d love to go back to his hometown for the holidays, but he doesn’t make nearly enough money working for Reigen to pay for a round-trip plane ticket, not to mention baggage fees and taxi rides to the airport and back. Besides, he thinks to himself glumly, if I go home now, I might not come back.

As desperately as he’d love to see Tome and all of the other kids he’d come to consider his siblings, he has a sneaking suspicion that he’ll lose his nerve if he relaxes too much over this break. After all, even with how difficult the schoolwork is and how abrasive his classmates can be, he still has a goal to reach. Someday, somehow, he’s going to find the boy who saved his life so many years ago and give him a proper thank-you. He can’t do that if he’s bogged down by his desire to go home, to just give it all up and go back to what he knows. Besides, he’s survived the first semester, so surely the second will come easier, right?

Despite his attempt at positive thinking, his glum attitude clings to him as he takes a detour toward the gym in an attempt to get out of the oppressive cold for a few minutes. He tugs his scarf down once more as he enters the building, the sudden shift in temperature causing his nose to run just a little. He sniffs, walking down a quiet hallway that separates the two main gymnasiums; the larger of the two houses the basketball courts and bleachers, while the smaller is relegated to extra storage and small school activities. It’s late enough at night that the building is empty, or at least that’s what Teru believes, until he hears the telltale sound of the dribbling of a basketball coming from behind the wide-open doors of the main gymnasium.

Teru pauses in his walking, curious, and peeks through the open door to see who could possibly be practicing this late at night. He’s expecting someone from the basketball team, coming to practice their shooting before bed, but instead he finds himself staring at Shigeo, still dressed in his uniform’s white shirt and navy slacks, his tie and jacket discarded to somewhere else in the gym. It’s so surprising that Teru does a double-take, his brain catching up with his eyes just in time to see Shigeo attempt a basket from the free-throw line. It bounces narrowly off the basket’s rim and hits the ground with an echoing thud, and Shigeo watches it roll away with slumped shoulders. Then he turns abruptly on his feet and looks up from the gym floor, catching Teru’s eye as he lingers in the doorway.

“Teru,” he exclaims, footsteps stumbling just a bit. He starts to make his way over, and Teru moves to meet him halfway, eyes lingering on the retreating basketball with curiosity. “What are you doing out here? Aren’t you going home for the holidays?” Shigeo continues, obviously surprised to see Teru still on campus.

“I could ask you the same question,” Teru says with a faint, forced smile, his previous feelings of isolation still not banished. “They’re going to close campus soon, right? You should hurry back, before the security guards come by and get angry with you for breaking curfew.” It’s already long past closing hours for the gymnasiums, and it isn’t really like Shigeo to overlook a detail like that when it’s clearly printed on the signs on every door.

Shigeo looks away, and Teru’s surprised to see a rather glum, faraway look come to his expression. It’s rare and just a little troubling to see Shigeo like this, compared to his usual small smiles or stony, expressionless default. “I guess I’m just not really ready for the holidays,” he murmurs in response, turning away from Teru and sitting down on the lowest bench of the built-in bleachers. “My family is always kind of weird around this time of the year. It’s… hard to be around them. I guess I’m just putting off the inevitable.”

Teru tilts his head, curious but hesitant to breach what could potentially be a sensitive topic for Shigeo. He lowers himself down onto the bench alongside his friend. “Weird how?” he asks eventually.

Shigeo just shrugs, still looking away. “I don’t know, exactly. It’s been like this for years, but I don’t remember what happened to make things like this. Even Ritsu…” He trails off, eyes fogging over for a brief moment as he goes still and stares out at nothing in particular. He’s only frozen for a second, but it’s enough to put the idea in Teru’s mind that something must be really wrong. Then Shigeo shakes his head and breaks the trance, turning to offer Teru a small, now-familiar smile. “It’s probably just my imagination, but I guess I’ve just been feeling kind of down about going home for the holidays.”

“Guess we’re both feeling a little sad today,” Teru chuckles, and finds himself, surprisingly, a little comforted that he’s not the only one feeling a little depressed now that the holidays are quickly approaching.

“You too?” Shigeo asks, but before he can say anything else, he’s interrupted by the sound of his stomach loudly growling.

Teru stifles a fit of giggles with his hand, the edges of his amused smile peeking out from between his fingers. “C’mon, why don’t we go over to the diner?” he suggests, standing up and holding out his hand to Shigeo.

Shigeo blinks up at Teru in surprise, though he doesn’t hesitate to take his offered hand. “Now?” he clarifies, letting Teru haul him to his feet.

Teru nods. “You probably missed dinner at home, right? I bet there’s something at the diner that we can whip up,” he urges, readjusting his bag on his shoulder while Shigeo retrieves his suit jacket and tugs on his winter coat and hat.

“I guess it’s worth a try, though Reigen and I already cleaned out the pantry and fridges for the break,” Shigeo mumbles into his scarf, which he wraps tightly around his neck as the two of them make their way down the familiar path to Sweets & Such’s front door. The lights are out and Reigen is, as expected, nowhere to be seen, but it’s easy enough to pluck the spare key from under the store’s welcome mat to let themselves in.

Shigeo flicks on the kitchen lights as Teru begins to root around the fridge and pantries to see what’s left over, but, as Shigeo had anticipated, there isn’t much left behind after the end-of-semester cleaning.

“An onion, some leftover shredded cheese, and half a loaf of stale french bread… there really isn’t anything left,” Shigeo sighs, staring down at the meager contents they’d managed to scavenge from the bare shelves.

Teru, on the other hand, is looking at the haul with bright eyes. “No, this will definitely work!” he assures with a grin, shucking off his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white undershirt to keep them from getting dirty. “I’ll just go french!”

“French?” Shigeo echoes, curious. Teru’s already moving around the kitchen, pulling out pots and setting them on the stove to heat while he scavenges for a few essential herbs and spices. “You can really make something with these ingredients?”

Teru meets Shigeo’s eyes across the kitchen and winks, his mind already racing with possibilities. “You can go ahead and wait for me in the parlor, okay? This won’t take long,” he assures, already cutting butter into the bottom of a small pot. I’ll use chicken stock as a base, with a little bit of salt for taste and the french bread to give it substance, he recites to himself, chopping onions and dropping them into the pot to caramelize. A little shredded cheese to top it off, and this is sure to make a really good soup.

As he goes over the recipe in his mind, he moves fluidly around the kitchen, now completely comfortable in this space that he’s come to claim for himself. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm, and the familiar processes that come with cooking are repetitive and soothing, drawing some of the tenseness from his shoulders and smoothing over the persistent crease in his brow.

He slides the shallow pot into the oven to toast for a few minutes, undoing his apron strings and hanging the dirty apron on its designated hook. He pauses for a moment, lets his hands linger on the apron’s edge, and frowns softly. The kitchen is too quiet. For a time, cooking here had made for a good distraction, but now all he can think about is the fact that there’s no one here but himself and Shigeo. No children hovering at the doorway in search of treats, no Sisters poking their heads in to see how he’s doing, no Tome come to steal tastes from his bowls and distract him with silly stories and dreams made up on the spot. He’d never realized before how much those little things meant to him, but now they seem so far away that they’d be impossible to obtain without giving up on his own dream.

Sighing defeatedly, he pokes his head back out into the parlor to let Shigeo know that the food is nearly ready. However, he hesitates when he sees that Shigeo has fallen fast asleep, his head resting on his arms atop one of the round tables in the middle of the room, his quiet breathing the only thing breaking the silence.

He must have been tired, Teru muses, wandering over to his table to stand at his side. He’s wearing his winter coat, but it’s still cold, even inside the diner. Just to be safe, Teru picks up Shigeo’s discarded uniform jacket and drapes it over his back and shoulders, if only to provide an extra layer to help stave off the cold.

Teru stands, quietly, at the side of the table for a few long moments, eyes downcast. Despite his desire to keep moving, to finish what he came for, he can’t help but feel like he’s not wanted or needed here, at least in the eyes of most. He has a job here, a class schedule, and friends, but even as he tries to list the good things in his head, he can’t seem to outnumber the bad. He sniffles loudly, reaching up to rub his nose as his throat tightens and he feels his eyes begin to burn. He has everything he could possibly ask for here, but he still finds himself sinking under the weight of his loneliness.

When Teru leaves the diner for the night, he leaves behind two things: the finished pot of french onion soup, and a neatly folded note containing only three words: “Thank you. Goodbye.”